Introduction
In the summer of 2003, I received an email from a person, Joe Murray, who had been reading my web page. He wanted to share some of the things that God had done in his life. I was so taken by his story that I asked if I could put it on my web page. He agreed. Here is Joe's story in his own words.
Tale of a Drunk's Strange & Miraculous Road to Sobriety
It's much more politically correct these days to use the term alcoholic rather than "drunk." The truth of the matter is that I was a drunk, and there it is. Fortunately, I never hurt anyone physically during the drinking years but the meat of the story is not the gory details of alcoholic existence. It's about how a life was changed in an instant to the beginning of a life of sober living. Like many stories of very personal miracles, this incident garnered no publicity or "news." It was important for me and a few others among those who considered mine a lost and totally failed life.
As you read this, please be mindful that my description of myself during my drinking years is a description of a totally different human being. As I found out during hundreds of AA meetings, two of the absolute indicators of alcoholism in the active alcoholic are selfishness and self centeredness. In those days, I was the poster child for those two ugly qualities.
My first drink, beer, was at age 18. Drinking continued over the next 20 years. Much of the time the drinking experience was, "normal" but there were intermittent incidents of trouble from drinking beginning in high school. The incidents worsened at college and during military service. After marrying and fathering two children in the mid 1960s the incident frequency lessened to the occasional weekends then increased again. The marriage and children disappeared. In the 1970s, I married again. This time there were no children.
By the fall of 1976, I was living alone in an old farmhouse that I had rehabilitated by hand. My life seemed to be at an end; in fact, I was toying with that very idea. The frequency of bad drinking episodes was high, every weekend and often during the week; my life was literally out of rational control. I'd been to a few AA meetings over the past 8 years but I "knew" that I didn't want to be one of "those people."
On Saturday, 2 October 1976, after a night out drinking, I dropped to my knees beside the bed and "prayed." Praying is not a thing I'd done for many years. I had no thought of a relationship with God; I'd studied all about God at parochial school, a protestant prep school, and a Jesuit university. After all the rote prayers and convoluted theological discussion, I "believed" in God only as an intellectual theory. The thought of praying came from the religious experience I'd been "forced" into as a child at home and at parochial school. The act of praying that afternoon was merely an act of desperation. At age 39 there was no person I could call who would not hang up on me. If He existed, maybe He'd listen.
The words I used as I beat on the bed with my fists are not repeatable here. I cursed him roundly for hiding behind His "curtain" and dared Him to come out from there if He had any guts at all. Suffice to say that I wept at my out of control life, an inability to control my drinking and all the folks who were "responsible" for my sorry "poor me" life. I dared Him to do something to help me IF He really existed.
After this "prayer" I waited for a time but nothing happened; no lightning; no puffs of smoke. If God really existed, He was obviously busy somewhere with His answering machine turned off. So I went downstairs and popped a beer.
(Years afterward I heard a tape by John Powell, a wonderful Jesuit priest psychologist. He made a point that the worst thing that happened to prayer was the printing press since prayer, as communication with God should be from the heart, not recitations without thought or feeling. He cited two examples of heart felt prayer. One was Job sitting on the manure pile and telling God, "I wish I'd NEVER been born!" The other about an Episcopal priest friend whose Morning Prayer time included talking to God, followed by the priest laying silent on the floor in a cruciform to see if God had anything to say to him. As they both knew, LISTENING is the other half of the communication. After hearing that I realized that, despite barracks language, my self centered prayer was the first time I'd ever tried to speak to God directly from the heart).
For the week following that Saturday prayer, I worked in my little 1 man business. The following weekend I was out drinking to the point of black out each night. I dimly remember driving home on Saturday night but to this day, I have no idea how I got home on Sunday night.
I woke at dawn on the morning of Monday, 11 October 1976 lying inside a briar patch behind the garage in a light rainfall. I'd never been able to get into the briar patch sober and now I was lying in the middle of it with no idea of how I got there. I did know I had a hangover that made my hair hurt. It was necessary to get into the house and clean up. After that my priorities were to call a cab, go to a bank machine to get some cash, cab to the bar where I'd been the night before to see if my car was there and, if it was, to get "just a little drink" to ease the pain of the hangover. That was my plan.
After getting into the house and cleaning up, I called for a cab. Just then, a realtor called to show the house. Expecting the cab to arrive quickly I agreed but testily. After waiting for a time, the realtor arrived and showed the house to a couple. I paced the kitchen looking for the cab.
As the group left the house and stood outside chatting, I went upstairs to get something. While there, I quickly used the bathroom and turned to the sink to wash my hands. It was a beautiful, cool, still morning in the country. Through the open window, I could hear the tires of the realtor's car crunch on the gravel drive as they drove out still no cab to get me to the bank and the bar.
Typically, the head is bent as you wash your hands. Mine was but suddenly, without thinking I looked up into the mirror and into my own eyes. In that instant something reached over my right shoulder and into the core of my body and made an adjustment I could feel it in my chest. It was so dramatically real that I jerked around to the right to see who was there with water splashing from my hands all over the floor. I stood there, frozen for a time with the water running into the sink.
I finally finished washing my hands, turned off the water, leaned on the sink, and looked into my eyes in the mirror again. In that second instant I "knew" two things (1) I had to go downstairs and call someone in AA and (2) I would never "have to" drink again. I had the shakes from abusing my body with alcohol but there was also warmth that produced a certainty about the two things I "knew."
Not knowing anyone in AA, I went downstairs and looked up the number of an AA club on the other side of the city. It didn't seem possible that anyone would be there at about 9:30 on a Monday morning but there was. I was asked if I could get through the day without drinking and I said I thought I could. The chap gave me his name and said he'd meet me at a meeting that evening. I agreed.
Not until that call was finished and I hung up did the cab arrive. I cabbed to the bank machine to get a little cash and cabbed to the bar. My car was there. I paid the cabby and stood for a moment looking at the outside of the bar on that beautiful morning "knowing" that so long as I followed through with the "command" to join AA, I'd never "have" to go there again.
It was a strange internal assurance since AA teaches One Day at a Time and I agree with that completely. But underlying my entire 26 plus years of a day at a time has been the assurance that was instilled in my soul on that day. There's no way I can explain it; I can only tell about it.
Remember that I did not intend to do anything other than getting a little "hair of the dog" that morning. I certainly had no idea about contacting "those people" at AA until that moment of clarity and inspiration. My experience was so dramatic that all I could do was accept a miraculous answer to my blasphemous prayer of the prior weekend without understanding it at all.
I drank a lot of coffee during that day at home and went to the pre arranged AA meeting that evening. The chap from the morning phone call met me at the door and offered me a coffee. I didn't know that the club tradition was to give new guys coffee in a cup and saucer instead of a Styrofoam cup. That way, the members would know who was new by the rattling and boy did I rattle. What was said at that meeting is long gone from my memory but I can clearly remember the room, the lighting, and the people. It must have been that first real AA meeting that I heard the advice to go to 90 meetings in 90 days and then decide if I'd continue. It must have been that night when I decided to follow that advice. In typical alcoholic thinking, (if one is good a lot is much better) I began attending 9 and 10 meetings each week and for the next three to five years, AA became my life to the exclusion of anything else but work.
As I learned in subsequent years outside AA, God sometimes provides an affirmation of the miraculous work He does. In my case, that affirmation (though I didn't know it for years) came less than thirty days later.
I was in the bath, in the same bathroom where the experience had taken place, one morning about two weeks after my first AA meeting when my phone rang. It was a drinking buddy of mine. He ran a large company in the city, had a lovely wife and two kids and a beautiful expensive home in the suburbs. His life was the kind that you see in magazines about highly successful people; mine was at the other end of the lifestyle spectrum.
We chatted and he then said he badly needed to spend some time talking with me that morning. I asked what was wrong. He said he'd been out drinking the previous night and had awakened on a bus stop bench in a small town near his home. He said he had to stop his drinking or he was afraid he'd lose his family. I told him that I didn't know anything about how to stop drinking and had only been in AA, as he knew, for a couple of weeks. He replied, "I know that but I know that you've completely changed. You're a completely different person and I want what you've found." I'd only seen him once briefly since the "adjustment" incident. I was concentrating on working and going to AA meetings each evening. Still, he had seen some significant changes (whatever they were) in me beyond just going to meetings. We met that morning and I took him to some folks with much more experience than mine. As far as I know, he is still sober today.
That was the first time I had the privilege of being used by God. Over time, my relationship with Him deepened and broadened in ways that are difficult to explain. There have been a number of occurrences with no explanation other than the intervention of God in a miraculous way for His own reasons.
At some point during the first ten years of sobriety and growth in the relationship, I began asking God to use me for His purposes, if He wanted to do that. There have been a number of times, many while traveling, that folks have struck up conversation, out of the blue, with me, a perfect stranger. Believe me, I'm no pop psychology "fixer" (don't like them much) but in each of those cases, the difficulty just happened to be something I had experienced in my own life. One of those stories is so outlandish that it had to be a miracle; as for the rest, only He knows.
Financially, my up and down life is once again at the other end of the spectrum from the magazines. However, after many years of living alone, God blessed me with the gift of an angel of a wife and while we don't have money, we are wealthy with friends and most important rich in our shared relationship with God.
It's been a long and good road from the briar patch and even if I'm old now, it ain't over yet!
Cancer Recovery
In 1981, after years of being away from any church, I was shanghaied into attending a "Christ Renews His Parish" weekend retreat at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Carmel, IN. I had agreed to go to shut a couple of friends up. The retreat plan assembled a group of fellows at the church on Friday afternoon and kept them there until Sunday after lunch. The guys who had been new on the last retreat put it on for the next group with one priest in attendance.
My friend George came to my apartment to work out the details after I remembered my commitment to attend. That's when I found out that he would pick me up and drive me there. It turned out that they didn't want any early weekend escapees from the men's retreat. The women were allowed to drive themselves:).
Looking back on it, I know that my attitude during Friday and Saturday was selfish and truculent. I really didn't want to be there. One of the few good things was that I bumped into a chap (Bob) with whom I'd interviewed for a job about four years prior to the retreat. We had a chance to chat for an hour or so and he seemed to be doing very well. I remember that the priest was beside me as we ascended the stairs to an upper room where he was going to celebrate Saturday evening Mass before dinner. He asked me how I was getting on. I was honest, but feeling sorry for myself, told him that I didn't know why I was there.
As it happened all of us guys were jammed into a tiny room upstairs and I happened by circumstance to be positioned directly in front of the (converted table) altar. The room was so small that when the guys running the kitchen were called up for Mass they had to crowd in the hall outside the open door.
Mass began as dusk descended on central Indiana. Something happened to me during that celebration. I didn't talk about it much at the time but something melted inside me. This was not a fancy holiday service with high classical music to induce special feelings in the congregation. This was a bunch of men crammed into a room, worshipping God and sharing in the Eucharist. Some were high level executives in major US corporations, some self employed, some worked on the factory floor, and at least one was a serious ex con. In that room, however, we were one body. It was curiously emotional for me but I believe that God speaks to us through all the senses that He created for us to listen for Him.
The following day, Sunday, the last speaker before lunch was Bob. He began by saying that he was scared since he had to enter St. Vincent's hospital the following Wednesday to have the cancerous lower lobe of his left lung removed. He had never smoked and was a physical fitness buff. In fact, on Wednesday he and a friend ran eight miles from their homes to the hospital. Surgery was scheduled for Thursday morning.
I called the hospital after work on Thursday evening for a report and to my amazement got Bob on the phone. He said the docs had done a complete exam before surgery and found the cancer had moved through the lung. They postponed surgery to Friday morning when they would remove the entire lung.
At about noon Friday I went to a nearby gas station owned by Dave Snow, a close friend of Bob's and another of the men who had put the retreat on for my group. After gassing the car, I went into the station and found Dave on the phone. As I finished paying the clerk, Dave hung up and was white as a sheet. I asked him if he'd heard anything from the hospital and he asked me to come back to his private office.
He said, "...that was Gloria (Bob's wife) on the phone. She has just come from a meeting with all the surgeons and nurses who worked on Bob this morning. When they opened him his lung was perfect and they didn't take it out. They showed her the x rays and photos of the lung with cancer but he has no cancer. They volunteered to travel anywhere in the world at their own expense to testify about what happened."
For months after the retreat, many of us attended the 06:00 Saturday morning Mass at the church (In February in Indiana you REALLY have to want to be there at that hour on Saturday morning). Within a relatively brief time, Bob and Gloria re joined the Saturday morning crowd. It wasn't long before Bob was running again. Not long after that I moved and don't know if they took the surgical team up on their offer.
The Mysterious Recognition
At around the same time in the early 1980s I volunteered to be the AA & Alanon phone on call guy for a weekend. I was busy and hoped that there would be no calls. There was only one on Saturday afternoon.
The Alanon answering service asked if I would speak to a young man whose father was drinking heavily. I called and we chatted for a time. He was very upset and in an apartment complex a short drive from mine. I popped over and we talked. As he calmed down, I found that dad was across the hall in "...his new girl friend's apartment." As our conversation ended, I suggested that we drop across the hall for a chat.
The lady said the father was sleeping but before we could leave his nibs came weaving down the hall holding himself up with the walls. I was on a stool at the kitchenette window. He weaved into the kitchen where he opened a bottle of Scotch and offered me a drink. I declined and offered to pour him a shot (so he wouldn't drop and break the bottle). He had one and immediately began to fade out so I knew he was in a blackout.
His son and I got him back into bed. As the lady helped cover him, he grabbed my wrist with a grip that was so tight I can still feel it 20+ years later. He glared at me and gasped, "...I know there's no God 'cause Rene Descartes PROVED there's no God!" I had to peel his fingers from my wrist as my hand went numb.
When we left there, the son told me that his dad was the plant engineer at the refinery on the north side of Indianapolis. I left my name and number with the son, in case he wanted to talk again and went home. I never heard from him. The only thing I had said to his father was that I would pour him a drink and if he ever wanted to get sober to call me at the number, I'd leave with his son or find an AA meeting.
A month or so after the incident a young fellow (Dan) in AA turned up who needed a place to live moved into an extra bedroom in my place. He was rebuilding his life and dating a lovely young lady. I was traveling the country in my job and it was good to have the apartment occupied. A few months later as winter turned to Spring I went to a Target store to get a couple of things on a Saturday afternoon and Dan went with me.
As we walked in the front door and past a display of patio furniture, someone called out my name. I looked around but didn't see anyone I knew. Suddenly I saw a man motioning to me to come over. I was stunned to see that it was the blacked out, drunken refinery engineer from months before.
We sat down in the patio furniture display and I almost couldn't speak. There is absolutely no way that he could recognize me from that 10 minute meeting months before. He could have known my name from his son but that was all. He insisted on thanking me for his being sober since he hadn't had a drink since that weekend. I tried to explain what had happened and that he owed me no thanks at all but he kept insisting that I had done it when, of course, I hadn't. He told me that he was getting his life back together, was seeing his wife again, and was working at re building his relationship with his kids. He was not going to AA, which was disturbing to me since it is the most successful path for alcoholics, but it is not the only path.
With my alcoholic experience, I know the stage of drunkenness he was in on the weekend we met. He was so far gone that his brain was only sparking in tiny spurts. For him to remember what I looked like reaches beyond the possible; yet he did. I was and am still stunned at the experience; science, logic, study of alcoholism and personal experience all inform me that he could not have remembered me clearly enough to pick me out of a crowd months after seeing me in a stupor for ten minutes. Was this one of God's miracles?
The next day, Sunday, Dan and I went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, arriving about 10 minutes early. The Masses were always crowded. We slipped into an empty pew towards the back without paying attention to anyone else. As we knelt there praying, I felt a tap on my shoulder just as the priest and servers took the Altar. It was the drunken engineer in the pew behind us. His wife was with him.
Out of all the churches in and around Indianapolis was this a coincidence; just one of those things or God's confirmation of His work? I never saw them again but I remain firmly convinced that God was telling me that He had used me in a small way for whatever His purpose was for that couple.
When I sobered up in 1976 I turned my life over to a God I didn't know nor understand. For almost 27 years, I've been studying God. The event that brought me to sobriety and a number of events afterward (so long as I've been willing to listen) including these two, have convinced me that His miracles today are as real and credible as those in Scripture if we're open to His leading and Will.
Joseph C. Murray
5922 Windham Court
Mobile, AL 36608
